


where my caution should be

by ivyspinners



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Galactic Civil War, Implied/Referenced Torture, Post-Movie(s), Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 13:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9822866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyspinners/pseuds/ivyspinners
Summary: "I am glad you're here with me," he says, or she says, or both. Their hearts beat in time, slow and restful.After Scarif, some attachments aren't so easily left behind, even when they're inconvenient. In a war, that has consequences.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [earnmysong](http://earnmysong.tumblr.com/) gave me this prompt: _I think I’ve got fireflies where my caution should be. (Instead of slowing down, I just shine brighter.)_

His last glimpse of Jyn for a very long time is the incoming light playing in her hair, strands escaping in the rising wind. She smells of the standard soap on Yavin Four, sea salt, and singed plastic. The copper tang of blood lurks beneath, but that's easy to ignore. He holds her tighter. He holds her as if the light will not tear him away, scattering his particles across the world.

 _I am glad you're here with me_ , he says, or she says, or both. Their hearts beat in time, slow and restful.

The plans stream across countless stars. He chooses to believe, because she does, that somewhere, someone listens to the greatest difference he has ever made to the galaxy. Their names will turn to dust like their bodies, but this legacy will live on.

"Thank you," he whispers into her ear. Her fire forged the last bricks on this path. He will not forget, for what remains of his life.

+

The rest of his life is longer than he thinks.

+

She joins the Pathfinders and leaves Yavin 4 before he wakes fully from his coma. Someone sits by his side while he dreams, waiting for the swelling in his brain to subside. He remembers her touch, on his hand, on his cheek, across his lips, but she is gone before he opens his eyes.

He goes through the databases once he can walk, and does not try to fool himself around why. It takes effort through his pounding headache, and a stain on his record afterwards, but he tracks her footprints across the galaxy.

A liberation in Kessel. Three factories on Sullust razed to the ground. A prison demolition on Wobani, and a stay on Chandrila afterwards, treated for electrical burns and chemical poisoning. He doesn't need to think long about the cause of both.

She has been busy, these past two months. There are commendations and incident reports alike attached to her file, a significant number of each. One mentions her initiative. The other, her recklessness. The only difference, it seems, is the name attached, of the person who was leading.

+

He spends the next six months recruiting, in the wake of the decisive Alliance victory, and sends away local information on the side. His scattered identities require longer to bulk, before he can go undercover.

It is not the safest of missions, recruiting, even on sympathetic planets. There are fewer Stormtroopers, and usually no Deathtroopers at all, but those stationed there are battle-worn, veterans, and weary. They have seen bloodshed without a blink.

Cassian does not have many scars, and even fewer are new. He gets another after a moment of impossibility, when a highly respected engineer agrees to meet. His recruit flees, and joins the Alliance that week.

Cassian takes longer, and his heart still beats on his return only because the Pathfinders chose to target a factory in that very city.

+

This time, she is on base when he wakes up. Bruises bloom along her cheeks, curving against the paleness of regrown skin. There are similar marks across her record. Jyn pays attention to neither.

She had raced in to save him.

"Reckless," he tells her, brushing his lips against her split knuckles.

"Full of initiative," she retorts, and leans in to kiss him. "And you're hardly one to talk. I walk into danger with three weapons. You walk with only one."

It surprises him that she opens her heart as easily as her arms, though maybe it shouldn't. He checks her mission logs each return to base, and breaks though security if records are sealed. It is attachment when he should have none outside the Rebellion, a tilt in the world no less than hers.

He thinks he should maybe turn back. Nothing safe lies down this path, and Cassian was, once, nothing but cautious.

But nothing safe lies down any path he takes, and he is too far gone. He has been too far gone since the light played in her hair, since she prayed to that crystal, since they circled one another like twins stars and made unhidden promises of home.

"I'm not worth it," he tries, because maybe he can spare her this, at least.

Her reply is almost gentle. "You are to me."

+

"Don't you dare die without me," she demands when they part, and he responds:

"Don't you dare die at all."

+

She spends little time on base. After his identities are as water-tight as they ever will be, he doesn't either. In the moments their paths intersect, they don't waste time dreaming of the future. It is difficult, imagining one even exists.

Sometimes, her flesh is caked with blood, and they scrub it off together. Sometimes, her body curves around his, like a momentary shelter from the cold past.

Sometimes, she cannot wait long enough, and is gone by the time he returns. Sometimes, many times, he waits in the darkness, to find her unit was redirected.

News filters back about cities taken under siege, and the base fills up with recruits. Her name is written, equally, in blood and in the awe of civilians saved. His is a reference to an alias at the bottom of a mission report.

+

Only once do their missions intersect in the same city again, and he saves her only after she saves him.

"What did you tell them?" he asks, and falters, because it's _her_ grinning painfully from the table.

"What would you?" she rasps though a mouth full of blood. Not in general, he knows but this situation precisely. If she were undercover, and a word would betray her.

Three years earlier, he would take the lullaby pill and sleep forever. Now, he might hold on until he could see her again. Either way, he would not breathe a sound, no matter what torment resulted from his defiance.

He lowers his blaster as she closes her eyes, her breath a slow exhale. Her whimper of pain arrows through his chest.

"I'm here," he murmurs into her hair.

"I know. I'm glad you're here with me."

The smart, logical, sane thing would be to break this before it breaks them.

He doesn't.

+

His last glimpse of Jyn very a long time is the moonlight playing in her hair, charging her gun for battle. There is not much use for spies on the forest floor, but he can shoot. There is a use for bodies.

"Ready?" he asks, watching her hands, watching her face.

"Always."

They kneel together, and her forehead touches his.

"For them," she murmurs, because certain names will never cross her lips easily. And then, more quietly, "For us."

His lips touch the curve of her earlobe, and she exhales, slow and shaky. A dark moon rises in the sky.

Somehow, it feels right that they will see the destruction of this one, to make up for missing the destruction of the first.

+

"Don't you dare die without me," she says when they part, and he responds:

"I won't."

+

She doesn't return from Endor.

Her name is scrawled across every history lesson of the war, and she is not there to protest. She doesn’t return from Endor.

His name is a footnote on reports quietly wiped, but he isn't around to care.

He does not return from Endor either.

+

( _I am glad_ , she whispers against his cooling cheek on the forest floor, _that you are here with me._ )

+

fin


End file.
